Tori Sparks - A Metaphorical Cabinet of Curiosities
- Oliver Blakemore
- Mar 22
- 3 min read
The world makes a lot more sense when there’s people in it showing us how wild it all is. My gran, who is ninety-six this year, is a painter and a lifelong student of the I Ching; she once told me that it’s the purpose of an artist to make sense of the world, to make everyone’s life a little better. I hear Buddha said something like that too. Never met Buddha. But I met my gran.
We remember great artists for a certain authority they manifest. Sometimes it shows up as the courage to speak truth to power. Sometimes it’s a sort of ferality, acting out in a way that breaks with normalcy. Sometimes they show up with an assertive “otherness,” either admirable or strange, or both.
I don’t know if there’s a precise term for it, but it is an almost a social authority. They are willing to examine the human condition from the outside, and they come back to offer their findings—with authority.
It’s good. We need these people. They make meaning out of what would otherwise be confusion and suffering.
Anyway, that brings me to Cabinet of Curiosities…
“It deals with basic stuff. Love and heartbreak and death and stuff.” —Tori
It’s a soothing experience to listen to someone speak with such fluency from the creative otherworld. Tori Sparks strikes an elegant balance between the shaman and the technician.
Listening to her talk about music is like a masterclass in the business and practice of the music industry. She speaks as fluently on the athletics of caring for her voice as she speaks about the strategy of band management, flitting from subject to subject with the speed and grace of a bird. She’s an articulate technician.
It leaves you in a calm place—with a sense you’re in good hands—which helps when she then takes flight into the shamanic aspects of producing music.
Tori is about to release a complex, quirky, nontraditional album project coming out called Cabinet of Curiosities. I believe it’s the kind of project that history will label “ambitious.”
It’s going to be twenty-one songs released in five separate packs, each pack with its own sound or style. It will reflect an idea similar to the old tradition of explorers going on adventures and coming back with exotic treasures and trinkets, and the stories behind them.
It was a practice common in Renaissance Europe; the trinkets were displayed in what were called Cabinets of Curiosities.
Before the invention of the internet, as Tori points out, these collections of natural wonders were one way people learned about the world. Sounds crazy, right? Humans interacting with humans, talking about real objects. No screens in between, no digital intermediary. It’s almost impossible to imagine today.
Tori is the product of a lifetime on the road and of years of adventures. And she’s gathered people from various corners of the world to participate in this project who are also adventurers. Together, they are building a Cabinet of Curiosities—but out of songs, rather than out of physical objects. These are musical curiosities that take on an array of subjects exploring the biggest questions of all: what really matters in this life? What makes us human? And what’s the point of it all? The 21 songs examine the human condition, with all its light and darkness, and some grey areas too.
I’ve heard some demos. Gospel choirs—rock and roll—trip-hop—folk and roots—nu-jazz— it’s all in there. And it’s going to rock, too. Musically, it’ll be what you expect from a technique-shaman world traveler with a demonstrated excellence in being a hybridized troubador/singer-songwriter/rock and roller. It’s just plain good music, brilliantly arranged, produced, and performed.
But also, it’ll stir things up.
It’ll surprise. It’ll provoke questions.
Which is part of the point. Tori says that the project is an opportunity for reconnecting on a human level with human-made things—a chance to regrow our connection to ourselves and our community after years of the tapestry fraying. So if Cabinet of Curiosities takes you out of your comfort zone at first, if it takes a minute to wrap your head around, that’s sort of the point.
And you’re in good hands. The technique-shaman’s authority—that perspective that the artist offers on the beautiful and the ugly parts of everyday life—offers comfort. Which is good, because the album is about “basic stuff. Love and heartbreak and death and stuff.” (Tori Sparks, 2026).
Well, at least it’s not taking on anything heavy.
She’s in the studio putting the finishing touches on it now, the first “pack” of songs will be released in April, with releases to follow in May, June, and beyond.
Good luck, Tori.
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